


The Supreme Leader is Dead

by Steampoweredwitch



Series: Chain of Command [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-03-19 12:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13704687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steampoweredwitch/pseuds/Steampoweredwitch
Summary: After being kidnapped by Ren, Hux does not take to the assassination of the Supreme Leader very well. As per usual, Kylo did not think things through very well.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [samedifference61](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samedifference61/gifts).



> The sequel to The Breaking Point, because I rushed that story and the giftee deserves better.
> 
> See end notes for content warnings

Explaining, as it turns out, is much more difficult than anticipated. Hux wakes slowly - up until the moment he finds himself not in his quarters or the medbay, but the throne room of the Supremacy. It spirals downhill from there.

Kylo should have expected as much. Whatever calm trance had settled over him on the Finalizer and driven him to the heart of the Supremacy was fading now. He couldn't articulate what he had seen anymore - only that the dream that had come to him of running Hux through the same way he he had Han Solo had terrified him like nothing else. Snoke's malice had only hardened his resolve. His master took pleasure not in seeing his powers grow, but in having a Force-sensitive toy he could batter around. Disillusioning is a mild word for it, but now, with a severed head lying a few feet away, and Hux stirring from the touch Kylo had forced onto his mind to keep him out of Snoke's reach, he comes to realize that he has no idea what comes next.

He sits not upon the throne, but at the foot of it, letting the General float to the floor as he tries to jolt out of the phantom grasp keeping him airborne. Hux's eyes are wild when he stumbles to his feet. They find the head first, slowly sagging into the polished floor, then Ren himself. Confusion gives way to indignation, fury.

"What is the meaning of this, Ren?" His lips curl in a snarl. Leaving his saber behind on the dias, Kylo rises, hands held up towards him, but the gesture only forces Hux back away from him.

"I can explain-"

"You murdered our ruler," Hux spits back. That wildness in his eyes hasn't calmed. He's dangerous like this. None of Kylo's visions prepared him for a hysterical General, but he doesn't know how to move any closer without appearing predatory. That's - part of who he is - a faceless weapon, a child in a mask, Snoke's mad dog.

"Yes. I murdered Snoke."

"And now what? You brought me here, just to float over your victory before you finish me off, too?"

It takes all his strength not to lash out. Hux is too wrapped up in his own head. If he makes the wrong move, he's sure he could break the General for good. At least he's finally letting Kylo come closer. Kylo holds his hand out, "I can't hurt you anymore. Trust me... Please."

He thinks, for a moment, that Hux might believe him. The General takes a step closer, some of the frenzy in his gaze dying down, coming closer to the calculating, rational expression he knows so well. Kylo leaves nothing hidden. He holds Hux's gaze, promising that he can explain everything, that he's safe.

As always, he underestimates Hux.

The blade sinks through him so easily he doesn't feel it at first. There's a flick of Hux's wrist, a beat of stillness. He can't read those cold eyes anymore, but something has gone wrong. Then, the shock begins to wear off, and he keels sideways. He's almost in too much shock to feel the pain when it comes. His brain tries to reject the sensations it's processing, to deny reality, but he looks down as he hits the ground knees first, and sure enough, a fresh gash runs along his belly. His tunic hangs open below the belt. Where the knife bit into his skin, innards peek through, trying to tumble out. He's still staring dumbly at them when Hux kicks him over by the shoulder.

That same hidden blade (monofilament, his memory supplies, a favourite of assassins for its sharpness) hovers over his throat moments later, Hux's weight sat full on his chest. As in his dream, he catches glimpses of Han Solo in his face, and suddenly understands. His fingers feel like lead when they brush Hux's cheek. He hoped this was still Snoke meddling with them, but really, he shouldn't have been caught off guard like this. After being rivals so long, they couldn't just flip a switch.

Hux still shudders under his palm.

His weight lifts from Kylo's body. A fresh spike of pain lances through him as the wound across his belly pulls horribly. Heavy boots hurry away. Kylo forces his eyes to stay open as the General takes the turbolift. He sees him look back, he's sure of it.

With a groan, he begins working on forcing his guts back into position. It hurts more than the crossbow bolt had. At least the wounds from Starkiller had cauterized. This one just keeps on bleeding. Things that should be still inside of him shift. He swears, things that would make his smuggler father roll in his grave if he weren't star dust lightyears away, and rolls inch by inch to his feet. It's a long way to the medbay... And then he has to track down Hux.

Snoke's head is left behind. By the time the turbolift returns and lets him stagger in, an alarm has begun blaring. This certainly could be going better.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux demands some answers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, see end for content warnings

The first few corridors he passes are empty. Hux isn't sure if the others onboard are likely to make attempts on his life, like Ren, but he's cautious at first. Everything seems to be in order as he stealths down the corridors. When he finally does cross people's paths, they are - docile. One officer walks silently through a doorway, right into a droid attempting to exit. They both proceed sluggishly around each other. The droid detects his heat signature, but does nothing about it - neither an alarm, or a salute. It's unnatural.

Brow furrowed, Hux steps from the shadows, still holding his monofilament blade at the ready. Two Stormtroopers on patrol come into view and march toward him.... Up to him. Past him. It's as if they are completely unaware of his presence. Hux turns toward them again. "Soldier!"

The troopers halt. Mechanically, they about face and await orders. Hux swallows the wild pounding of his pulse. This unusual circumstance is nothing he cannot overcome, but at least he understands battles and politics. What could leave them so catatonic? Surely not Ren?

"Surrender your blaster," he commands the soldier on the left. Lethargically, he is obeyed. The trooper passes him the blaster, and drops his hands loosely to his sides. Hux considers telling him to remove his helmet, but in the off-chance there is some pathogen at work here, he opts for a more sure course of action. He plugs a bolt into first one, then the other vacant body. Neither attempt to defend themselves. They just crumple silently. Perturbed, he takes the blaster with him, and heads for the bridge.

Floor after floor passes him by with similar disinterest. Troopers, officers, and droids perform their duties with lackluster monotony, ignoring signs of life around them. The further from the throne room he goes, the more tense he becomes. He thinks back to Ren in brief fragments, chasing the moments away every time before the monster in his chest can arrest his breathing over what he had to do. They are rivals, yes, but killing him - especially so slowly... He discounts the attempts at grief, refuses to even name any further sentiment on the issue, and pushes his way to the bridge.

Here, somehow, he finds signs of life. The voices are sluggish, but people are speaking regardless. A guard by the door barks, "General on deck," but his eyes keep sliding out of focus. The Captain in command of the bridge does her best to march to him, to salute and offer a report of the vessels status. Hux purses his lips.

"Have the Supremacy swept for any pathogens," he orders, "and read out the crew vital signs. I also need a medical team and Force-suppresion squad dispatched to the throne room for Commander Ren."

The break in routine stirs the Captain and several others closer to some semblance of normalcy. She nods and distributes duties with harsh commands, but she still executes no inefficient movement, no additional commentary. Hux waits, with one eye on the entrances to the bridge. No one has taken note of his blaster yet.

The readouts come back - optimal. According to the computer, not a soul on the Supremacy has so much as a sniffle. None of the air scrubbers have encountered so much as an ou-of-place germ. He grits his teeth. What he wouldn't give for the ability to scan for anomalies in the Force.

"Sir," the Captain finally speaks up of her own accord. Hux does not jump. But he is mildly startled. "I feel - odd."

"Explain."

"As if part of my cog- cognitive- part of my thoughts are - missing? Supreme Leader Snoke has not been..." At least two others nod along with her halting elaboration, despite the sentence hanging unfinished. Several keep shaking their heads, eyes sliding in and out of focus.

His conclusions are still relatively limited at this point, but it seems like no an optimal moment for another test. "There have been no orders. That's what you're telling me?"

"Sir," she confirms, lighting up a little more and fading away again.

Hux takes a single breath. "The Supreme Leader is dead; I will be assuming command of the Supremacy, and the Order."

This time, several heads snap his way. He glares them down. There's no turning back no. "I want that medical team to put Lord Ren under arrest. Sound the intruder alert alarms and make sure he does not leave this ship."

The commands produce a flurry of action, all of it according to his orders. It's beyond disturbing, but for a few minutes, the crew seems normal. He continues issuing orders, testing their limits, their reflexes. A Lieutenant speaks out of turn to ask Hux how the Supreme Leader died. He takes it as a sign of recovery from this vacant madness, and decides to answer evasively for now.

Once the bridge is at least minimally functional, and the ship is no longer at a standstill, he takes a moment to duck into the office meant for the Commanding Officer (at present, that should be the Captain running the crew through performing routine intruder sweeps on deck). He bars the door, and comms the medbay. When the doctor answers, an exhausted looking man in his mid fifties, he finally gets some proper kriffing answers.

 

* * *

 

 

The first squad is primarily comprised of escorts for a medic. He's holding himself together with what limited medical knowledge he has, but Ren has no way of knowing what's truly going on inside the long gash Hux left in his belly. He gives them a few mistrustful glances. The medic has patched him up before, but he doesn't trust the situation.

Red light still pulses through the corridors. Hux has put the ship on high alert. Hux... He grimaces. As he moves toward the gurney they brought with them, ready to collapse and let someone else keep his guts in for a while, one of the troopers mechanically produces a pair of electrified cuffs.

"Hands up," the gruff voice orders.

Kylo wants to laugh at him. He's too fucking tired. This is going to be a hell of a day. He unclips his saber and cuts the trooper in two. Everyone except the medic, who is backing away nervously, draws riot batons or blasters on him. Kylo sighs heavily and slides into a pained battle stance. "Come on, then!"

 

When the troopers lay dead, and his split side's agony begins to take the forefront of his mind again, he looks about. The doctor has a blaster burn in their forehead. Classic. Of course, they had to be stupid enough to take him on alone, and had to kill his best hope of survival in the crossfire. He lurches to the gurney and digs around for supplies. There's enough to stabilize him, but not for stitches. Knowing Hux, more guards would come soon. He gritz his teeth against the pain, and takes what he can carry. The lightsaber stays ignited at his side.

 

* * *

 

Hux is still on the comm with the doctor when the commotion starts on the other end of the line. A blood-thirsty spattered crew dashes in, pushing the hoverbed Ren has been restrained to. His mouth falls open at the sight. Their conversation about what in fresh hell Snoke had been doing to his crew prior to his abrupt death is cut off by the doctor shooing out the Force-suppresion squad and barking orders to nurses and droids alike.

He forgets to terminate the call with the newly self-appointed Supreme Leader. Hux sits at the desk, hands developing an unsightly tremor. Regardless of Kylo's intentions in abducting him, seeing him like that turns his stomach. It's quite possibly worse than the wounds he sustained fighting the scavenger on Starkiller. Hux swallows down a mouthful of bile and turns off the visual. The audio continues running. Medical jargon flies right over his head, but what he does catch makes him very doubtful Ren will survive.

Covering his mouth, he turns his thoughts back to what he's learned about Snoke, if only to stay sane.

The turnaround rate onboard the Supremacy has always been high. He thought it more to do high expectations, and the demands of the job. If the chief medical officer is to be believed, it's closer to prolonged exposure to whatever Force tricky Snoke employed doing longterm damage to the crew. He still can hardly wrap his head around it. It seems that the crew had been highly functional in his presence, but deteriorated rapidly during shore leaves, or came down with neurological symptoms reconditioning could only correct for so long. The number of unnoticed early retirements on file are astounding. This crew, troopers, officers and other personnel included, are nearly a hundred thousand strong. The average career onboard is a fraction of what it should be, some only numbering in months. The bridge crew seem to last the longest against these adverse effects, but with Snoke dead, who knows what will happen to these individuals?

A monitor in the medbay began beeping shrilly. Hux terminated the call abruptly, chest right.

Damn it all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: minor character death - two faceless stormtroopers, continuted warning for Kylo's knife wounds from the last chapter


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have another chapter in the editing process right now. Hopefully graduating leaves me with more spoons for writing.

After terrorizing the crew of the Finalizer for so long just by being, Ren had been the one unnerved by the robotic stumbling of the Supremacy crew. It hadn't even been a lack of fear - they're bred for that, but a total disregard for themselves as wave after wave seemed to wait their turn to be clipped by deflected bolts or cut down by his saber. He had lost count of how many there had been after someone had managed to clasp those damn cuffs on his wrists. Even before that - the Force had been hesitant to respond to his commands, as if it hadn't known him anymore. Without its strength to keep him upright, the fight had become remarkably short. He might have crushed them all, otherwise, but he had been losing blood, losing stamina, slowing down. When he had finally collapsed, there had been so much pain he'd had to pull back from reality. Some injuries had been too much to bear, his body held together by precarious threads. Abandoning consciousness, he had thought back to all those times General Hux had come banging on his door in the last few weeks that he hadn't responded to - what he had wanted from him. This had felt like dying, so what was the harm in pondering some silly what-if, where Snoke was right about just one thing...?

  
Death hadn't wanted him. To die is to return to the Force, after all. It made sense, in retrospect, that his eyes sluggishly opened again rather than remaining closed forever. He didn't maintain consciousness long enough to feel philosophical about survival for a long time to come.

  
When he does wake beyond snatches here and there, his head is thick with fog. His sight comes and goes at first, eyes seemingly in open rebellion against his attempts to make out his surroundings. He wrenches himself upright on the med table too quickly. There's an intense sensation analogous to pain that shoots through him, dulled by medications, and a nausea similar to what he experienced after his surgeries some weeks ago. Droids hover over him, clacking and whirring. There are no people in his small chamber, but at the door, he can make out the elbow of a trooper standing guard, just hidden by the frame. The trooper doesn't peek around the corner when the droids jolt out of their sleepy care routine, all chittering little meaningful sounds at him. One pipes up that it will inform the Supreme Leader of his condition. Another zips away for the doctor. A third and fourth work merrily on rechecking his vitals.

Kylo slumps back onto his elbows weakly. The room is unbearably cold - but that could be another side effect of medical procedures performed on him while he slept. Shivers take him frequently. He's beginning to wonder if he's ever going to get to properly heal at this rate. Memories begin filtering back as he catches sight of the thick layers of black synth skin meshed through his center. Snoke. The march through the Supremacy. The lifeless Stormtroopers. Hux...

In truth, it's a bit much to handle. He had trusted the clarity brought on by the Force when it guided him to kill Snoke. It had been easy to smother the life out of his former master. Too easy. And then with the drone-like soldiers swarming over him... His thoughts circle back to how he came to be here, to Hux. Again, Kylo turns away from them. Instead, he considers what the power struggle must have looked like after his act of treason. The Order has never undergone a loss quite like this, and Snoke likely left no protocol in place for his demise, both too arrogant to believe himself vulnerable, and too cautious to allow ambitious types the opportunity to plan for his downfall. Kylo turning on him was probably expected, but not like this. It doesn't seem, real, but for the pain.

His wounds ache. Numerous tubes run in and out of his body. Kylo dreads what some of them imply. He closes his eyes against the world. He's too tired to even consider an escape plan just yet. Moving at all has sapped all of his strength. There's no time to sit idly and recover, but that is what he's compelled to do. Agitated, Kylo reaches out to the Force. Like before, he has trouble reaching it, but it's closer than before. He can sense the dark - and the light. Currently, its glow is nothing more than the flicker of an insect in his peripherals, but he's always suspicious of it.

He isn't immediately immersed in the dark side, or the light. He has to stretch himself out and call to it, coax it back into his reach. It's beyond unsettling that he has to work so hard. His patience wears thin quickly, but with a sharp tug, he catches a tendril within his grasp, and at last, the Force yields. Spiteful and malcontent, it thrashes in his grip. The upset isn't - direct. There is something unbalanced at work, but it doesn't feel like the Force holds him responsible. As much as he yearns to take delight in that, it settles a heavy stone of concern low in his gut. He sinks deeper, intent on questing for the disturbance, and-

_Oo-wooow!_

He is hurled out of what little trance he's scraped together by the whirring of an overexcited medical droid. The doctor he has been assigned is not human, but rather a many-limbed droid, standing at a neat five feet. The droid pats the smaller unit, much like he's seen crew members do. Sometimes, the personality routines these things come with can be uncanny. Kylo forces himself to lift his head, watching with suspicion as it gazes down at him, arms already in motion all around it.

"Good morning, Commander Ren. I am 2MED5. You've been unconscious for some time. Please, remain calm."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters will get longer after this, I swear. Thanks for sticking around!

Hux is in the midst of a conference when the alert comes in. It takes all his willpower to resist opening the transmission then and there. His position is not so secure that he can disregard basic protocol. The medbay has instructions for the most likely scenarios. He is still trying to pry answers out of Snoke's files, and establish himself amid the last few days of chaos. Thankfully, Canady appears competent, and so are a number of senior officers. It still seems, as of yet, that no one can answer his questions about the strange goings-on aboard the Supremacy.

More accurately - none of them seem capable. They haven't noticed, or quickly move the subject along, or simply become vapid husks for a minute or two, staring off into the middle distance as others around pick up their slack, sometimes even going so far as to reach across their comrades to adjust their consoles for them. It unsettles him. He intends to purge this plague from the ship. After medical confirms for him a third time that there are no contagions, poisons or chemical agents at play here, his investigation will move into the reconditioning program.

Another probing question sends a pair of good officers into a relatively useless state again, and Hux takes that as his cue to cut matters short for the day and send them back to their duties. He marches back to his spacious new office, and finally has a chance to address the holo waiting for him.

Ren, it appears, has been awake for long enough to deem his attention necessary. Hux makes a good show of appearing unaffected by the news. In truth, he is shaken by all this, especially Ren's mysterious actions that led to their current power struggle. There are also the long minutes spent waiting outside a door that refused to open for him before that. Memories that seem more fond of haunting him now that Ren has tried to kill him than when he actually (mistakenly) thought that he needed him. Hux deflates marginally and passes a hand over his eyes. A foolish weakness; one he's set aside in pursuit of at last consolidating the Order's reign over the galaxy properly.

No more Force users. No more distractions. He sets the notifications regarding Ren to mute... then changes them back to low priority, on the off-chance he escapes and goes on a rampage again. Something heavy sits on his chest as he tucks the device away and begins digging into the records on reconditioning for the Supremacy for the last ten years. He calls it determination, as if that will make it easier to forge ahead.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: graphic description of stabbing, mild gore, but no character death


End file.
